Dyadic and bidirectional associations between physiological reactivity and maternal overcontrol

Negative emotional arousal is linked to parental overcontrol, which in turn may be reinforced by subsequent increases in both children's and parents' emotional reactivity. However, to date no studies have adopted a dyadic perspective that examines bidirectional, within-dyad associations between children's and their parent's physiological functioning and parental overcontrol during challenge. We examined the dyadic autonomic correlates of overcontrol, predicting that relative increases in each dyad member's heart rate (HR) would both precede and follow relative increases in maternal overcontrol. Hypotheses were evaluated in 112 mother-child dyads (8- to 12-year-olds; M_age = 10.28 yrs.; 51.6% male; 41.1% White, non-Hispanic) who participated in a series of six impossible-to-solve puzzles. Results of latent curve models with structured residuals demonstrated few associations between mothers' or children's HR and maternal overcontrol. Mothers' HR was positively associated with maternal overcontrol at the end of the challenging task. Surprisingly, children's HR was marginally negatively associated with subsequent maternal overcontrol, which in turn was negatively associated with children's subsequent HR, during the first half of the challenging task. Deviations in child physiological functioning may influence maternal behavior through mothers' orienting toward children's level of engagement in the task; future work is needed to assess whether overcontrol reflects mothers' efforts to upregulate their children's arousal and motivation during a performance challenge.